Jacob's 1st Birthday Party

It's party day! The normal plan will be to have Jacob's party the weekend following his actual birthday, but this year Jake was supposed to have his knee surgery on June 2nd, 3 days before the party, so we decided it was best to move it to the weekend before. After we found out that his surgery date was getting moved up things were crazy around here for a couple weeks. By the time we started thinking about planning the party, we just decided to keep it on the Saturday before.

It was a fun time. There were people. There was food. OH! I was impressed with our food choices. I made strawberry spinach salad (SO YUM! Jake even ate it!), a jello/cool whip/cottage cheese salad, had a veggie tray, nacho cheese warming in the crockpot, and pizza snacks baking in the oven.

The cake. Ah yes, the cake. SOOOO.... the plan was to have a Mickey cake. I was going to make a round cake with 2 round mini cakes for the ears. The top half was going to be black and the bottom half red with white buttons. I was going to use little marshmallows for the buttons. I wasn't sure how to get black frosting and I couldn't find and black food coloring. I did find black icing coloring. I started by mixing a little bit in. It looked rather grey instead of black. So I added more. Stirred. Darker grey, but still nowhere near black. So I added some more. And some more. And, yes, more, until I used the whole little jar. I tasted it and.... YUCK! It really wasn't meant to be frosting tinting. What do I know? I like photography, I'm still having to work on my cake making skills!

So the hour before the party I made my way to the grocery store to buy a Mickey cake. I went to 2 different stores and neither one had Disney anything. So I bought a plain 'ol white cake with white frosting and had them write Happy Birthday Jacob. I wasn't sure that Jacob's cousin Chase would be able to make it (they share the same birthday), so I didn't have them write his name on the cake. As it turned out, he was able to come to the party. I made sure that he got his own cupcake/candle to blow out when we sang ♪ Happy Birthday ♫.

Shyla fully enjoyed herself! She had great fun with Uncle Bruce during the impromptu water fight. She even poured a bucket of water on Candy Grandma! After most of the party goers had left 2 more familes showed up. This was great for little Miss Shyla, because she got a second wind and continued to run around with their kids! She refused to take a nap and really just wanted to "help" Jacob open his presents.

After the party, Jake, Shyla, and myself got to take a ride on the Harleys. Well, Shyla sat on Candy Grandma's. I got to ride on Uncle Bruce's. Jake took a ride on Uncle Bruce's and got a second ride on Candy's. Aunt April rode her bike too. It was a lot of Harley for our street :)

All in all it was a fun day and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. Given that we'd had rain 2 days prior, we weren't positive the weather was going to be good for the party. We were prepared to have it indoors if needed... but there was no need.